Devil In The Wishing Well
by ilarual
Summary: All Liz Thompson wants to do is get her sister out of Nevada and away from their abusive mother, but there's only so much she can do. When she stumbles upon a wizard's manual, however, she finally has her chance. But when her mother's abuse reaches a new extreme, even Liz's new talents may not be enough to undo the damage. Liz-centric, shades of TsuLiz
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note-** Well, here it is, Resbang 2015! Before you read, I want to note that this fic is not completely finished. I had some extenuating circumstances (illness, being stuck for days sans computer) that cut down my writing time severely. _The Resbang mods were aware of this ahead of time and gave the okay for me to post the last couple of chapters a bit late._ If it weren't for the holiday I would say I'll have them up by the end of the week, but I don't want to bet on having time to work around family stuff, so if I can't get everything up by Friday, then definitely you'll see the remainder of the fic by next week.

And now that the heavy stuff's out of the way...

When I signed up for Resbang this year and planned to write TsuLiz, I planned to write a short, sweet, fluffy established relationship fic. And then I decided I was going to write an incredibly messed up Revolutionary Girl Utena AU. As you may have noticed, this is neither of those fics. Whoops. Instead, this is an AU based on Diane Duane's Young Wizards series (which I highly recommend checking out, they were some of the most influential books in my development as a young author when I was in middle and high school). It's set in the YW universe and there may or may not be a few sly references to canon YW events, but it is not following the plot of any of the books. This is also the first installation in a TsuLiz series, and unquestionably the least shippy (which is a shame, because when I started out, like I said, I wanted fluff and smooches), so stay tuned for the next installment!

I'd like to give a few shoutouts, firstly to my artist partners. Scarl, ProMa, Kasper, you guys have been amazing to work with, and you all inspired so much of how this fic grew and developed. You're the fertilizer that helped this project grow. I'll be including links to their art in my profile (and by that I mean on my tumblr link page because ffnet no longer allows links outside of this site in profiles) so keep a lookout for that! Secondly, thanks to my beta team, which also included ProMa and Scarl, as well as the fabulous Lucyrne and Dollypop. You guys rock.

 **Please be aware that this fic contains strong language, portrayals of physical and emotional domestic abuse, allusions to prostitution and drug use, and... well... Giriko. So, you know, proceed with caution.**

* * *

The front door of the run-down apartment slammed shut behind Liz Thompson as she stomped down the cracked concrete steps. Her left sneaker was still untied, but she didn't stop to fix it until she had stalked to the end of the block and out of sight of the dirt-caked windows of her building. Only then, once she had rounded the corner, did she bend down to lace it up properly.

Shoe fixed, she slumped back against the brick building, eyes closed. She sucked in a few deep breaths, trying in vain to steady her pulse.

Another day, another screaming match.

It was far, _far_ from her first fight with her mother, and it most definitely would not be the last. Liz was used to it by now— or at least she should have been— but every single time, she still found herself trembling from a jumble of anger and fear. It was always a coin toss which emotion was going to be more prominent on any given day.

Once she was reasonably collected and back in control of her face, she stepped away from the brickwork and set off down Rose Avenue, determined to head the school bus off before it got to their block.

She got to the intersection of Rose and Ashburn in the nick of time. Waving frantically, she caught Patti's attention through the window, and after some fancy talking to convince the bus driver to let one of his charges off a few stops early, she had safely collected her little sister.

"Hi, Jellybean," Liz said, wrapping an arm around her sister's shoulder and squeezing her to her side as she steered her away from the bus stop. "How was your last day?"

"Good!" Patti exclaimed. "Miss Yumi brought ice cream!"

Liz kept her grin tucked in her cheek, giving her sister one more affectionate squeeze before releasing her. "That's great. And how's the report card?"

Patti glanced shiftily around, eyes sliding away when she caught Liz's gaze. "Goooooood," she said, and the dubious way she drew out the syllable told Liz all she really needed to know.

"Let's see it." Liz held out her hand.

She reluctantly swung her neon pink backpack around and rummaged through it, producing a little manila envelope that looked a bit worse for wear, as if it had been thrown on the ground and stomped on a few times.

Liz opened it and pulled out the card inside. "Hey, this _is_ pretty good!" she said. "You got A's in art and gym… and look, a C in reading!" The less said about her other grades, the better. Patti wasn't stupid— the opposite, actually— but she had a hard time focusing for long, and her grades tended to reflect that. She would be starting junior high in the fall, and Liz worried about how she would handle the harder classes. There wasn't much she could do if Patti was struggling. She was no academic herself, and she sure as shit couldn't afford a tutor, and neither could their mother.

 _Not that the bitch would even if she could_ , Liz thought bitterly.

Her praise had put a smile back on her sister's face, and Liz breathed an internal sigh of relief. She was more than four years older than Patti, but that didn't mean she always knew the best way to make her happy.

"You're coming with me to work today," she said, as they turned off Rose and onto the busier Oakland Avenue.

"Won't Mr. Buttataki mind?"

Liz shook her head. "Nah, Joe's always cool with you crashing in his office, you know that."

Patti grinned that sunshine grin of hers. "Yay! He let me play on the computer last time."

"That's great, Patti," she said, silently thanking her boss for being so tolerant of her sister. On days like this, when she didn't dare let Patti go home without her, Joe was a godsend. Admittedly, he was a godsend anyway for "not noticing" that her mother's signature to permit employment of a minor was very obviously forged. Plausible deniability, he had called it. After all, how was he to know what her mother's handwriting looked like?

She was pretty sure Joe knew more than he let on about their home life, but he didn't pry, which she appreciated, and he let her keep her job, which she appreciated more. It was only minimum wage at Starbucks, but it was money _she_ controlled instead of her mother.

It was reassuring to have Joe as a reminder that not all adults were the scum of the earth, but Patti's next words derailed that pleasant train of thought quite effectively. "Is it Mom again?"

"Huh?"

"Is. it. Mom. again?" Patti asked. "Is she why I can't go home?"

Liz violently hated that she couldn't shield her sister's mind as well as she shielded her body. No kid deserved to know their mother was scum. "Yeah," she said. "She's got a new boyfriend. Doesn't want to be disturbed." Among other things.

Patti nodded solemnly. "She never wants to be bugged anyway."

While Liz was trying to find a response appropriate for an eleven-year-old's ears, she was jostled by someone carrying an armload of books. One of the books slipped from the pile and landed with a slap on the pavement.

"Watch where you're going, asshole!" she exclaimed as Patti bent down to pick up the book.

"Shouldn't we give this back?" she asked, holding up the slim volume.

Liz shrugged and tried to catch sight of the person who had bumped her, but they seemed to have disappeared. They were in a busier area now, closer to downtown, and the streets were crowded. Whoever it was had already gotten lost in the crowd.

"Nah," she said. "If he can't be bothered to stop, he must not want it that bad." She plucked the book out of her sister's outstretched hand and tucked it into her purse.

She thought no more about the incident until several hours later.

* * *

It was only the end of May, but the heat of the Nevada desert was already impressive, even in the evening. When Liz and Patti stepped out of the air-conditioned interior of the Starbucks hours later, the heat hit them like a wave. There was only a narrow strip of greenish light lingering on the horizon, but the heat radiating from the sun-warmed pavement kept temperatures in the city several degrees higher, even as the parched land beyond the city limits started to cool off.

After she waved a lazy goodbye to the closing crew, Liz took her sister's hand and led her back in the direction of the apartment.

The grungy apartment complex they called home wasn't much to look at from the outside, only two stories tall with dirty windows and a cracking brick facade, and it wasn't any better on the inside. The hallway was narrow with dark wood paneling that made it seem even more claustrophobic than it was, and a faint odor of mildew and marijuana lingered in the air no matter how many fancy air-fresheners the landlady sprayed when showing the place to new tenants.

It was obvious the minute Liz pushed open the door that her mother had been smoking. The ashy, bitter smell of tobacco stung her nose, and she wished it had been weed, because that wouldn't be quite so noxious. Patti's cough when she followed Liz inside was a sharp reminder of why she had quit smoking.

Liz glanced across the living room and made eye contact with her mother. Roxanne "Roxy" Thompson, the Head Leech herself, was sprawled in a threadbare recliner, blue eyes glassy and fixed on her daughters. Her feet were propped up on the glass-top coffee table, the only really nice piece of furniture that they owned, and Liz winced at the scratches her cheap heels were making on the glass.

"What time is it?" she demanded harshly.

"Quarter to ten," Liz said tiredly.

"And what the hell is my babygirl doing out of my house so late?" Roxy said, mashing out her cigarette on the ashtray before getting unsteadily to her feet. "School got out at _three_."

"Nice of you to remember," Liz muttered under her breath.

"Liz took me to work with her!" Patti piped up. "Mr. Joe let me play on his computer."

Roxy raised an eyebrow. "Oh yeah? And why the hell did you go there?" she said, and her tone was dangerous. "Thought I told you to come _home_ after school."

Patti opened her mouth, but Liz stopped her with a light touch on the shoulder. "How about you go have a shower, Patti? Mom and I can talk."

Big blue eyes blinked up at her as Patti eyed her doubtfully. "Are you sure?" she asked.

Liz nodded. "Yeah, go on." She gave Patti a little nudge toward the door to the bathroom between the apartment's two tiny bedrooms. Once she had trundled off and closed the door behind her— not that a door was likely to do much good— Liz turned back to look at her mother.

"The hell did you take Patti to fuckin' Starbucks for?" Roxy demanded.

"Figured since you were so _busy_ with your new _boyfriend_ , you wouldn't want company," Liz said, unable to keep the sarcastic sneer out of her voice even though she knew it would get her in worse trouble.

The sleep-and-whiskey glazed look didn't leave Roxy's eyes, but her gaze sharpened anyhow. "That's not your fuckin' call to make," she growled. "I'm her damn mother, I'm both of yous mother and you do whatever the fuck I say."

Liz snorted. "Yeah, okay," she said. The sarcasm was in the building and it wasn't going to be leaving anytime soon, apparently. This was the problem, this was what always got her in trouble, her complete inability to just keep her mouth shut and roll with the punches.

Roxy took a worrisome step closer. "Don't you _dare_ take that attitude with me, I'm your mother and you _will_ respect me."

"Gimme a reason to, and maybe I will."

Liz really should have seen the backhand coming.

"She's my daughter! _Mine_ , not yours, you self-righteous bitch!" Roxy shouted, voice creaking and weak from too many cartons of cigarettes over the years.

There was a fire burning in Liz's gut and she was sure it shone out her eyes as she gave her so-called mother the devil's own glare, but even she knew enough was enough. Her cheek was stinging and she'd probably have a enough of a bruise tomorrow as it was.

"Fine," she muttered, and turned away. "I'm going to bed."

"Whatever. Just remember to pay the fuckin' rent tomorrow."

Liz shrugged and walked away. She was grateful that Roxy didn't say anything else or try to follow her. Two arguments in one day was enough, and all she wanted was to go to bed.

Liz made a brief detour to the kitchen. She could have gone to the bathroom but she didn't, not because the sisters felt the need to give each other that much privacy in the shower, but more because she didn't want Patti to see if she was already bruising.

She surveyed her reflection in the microwave, and saw that in addition to the bruise she would have tomorrow— which, this time at least, would not be hand-shaped— she had a little cut right above her cheekbone from her mother's cheap ring. She grabbed a paper towel and wet it at the sink, then dabbed at the small spot of blood that had welled up.

Hopefully it wouldn't scar. Her skin was so fair that any blemish or flaw stood out too clearly. _Well_ , she thought, _I still have some money left over from my last paycheck. Maybe I can go and buy some of that scar cream they advertise on TV, just to make sure…_

Roxy was still glaring at her as she left the kitchen. Liz pointedly ignored her and turned the corner through the living room into the smaller of the two bedrooms. Shutting the door behind her, she set down the purse she was still carrying with a sigh, and was momentarily surprised by the thump it made, until she realized she still had the book she'd picked up earlier tucked away in there. She bent down and extracted it, tossing it towards their bed (which was actually just a mattress on the floor, but that was fine) as something to look at later. It had been a long day, she still smelled faintly of coffee, and she wanted was a distraction from the way her cheek throbbed.

She tied her hair up, shed her clothes in favor of an oversized t-shirt, and settled down on the mattress. Despite the warmth of the evening, she wrapped herself up in the stained quilt, burrowing down beneath it. Once she was bundled up enough, she opened the book.

Liz had never been a great reader. She'd cracked open a book now and then, but mostly for school, and mostly she found herself not giving a shit. Right now, though, she wanted a distraction, and she had to admit she was curious.

It was a fairly plain little book, bound up in that blue buckram like a school-library encyclopedia. The front was stamped with a title in gold: _Wizard's Manual_.

Liz frowned. Must be some kind of fantasy book, she decided, and nearly tossed it away right then and there. She didn't have much interest in fantasy— some of her classmates before she'd stopped going to school had eaten it up, but she didn't have much patience for it. She could see the appeal to an extent. The escapism must be nice. But Liz didn't have the time to forget reality. If she'd been an only child, maybe, but she had Patti to think about, and daydreaming away wouldn't get her sister fed and clothed and sent to school on time.

But when she opened the book, she found that it was not a novel after all, but instead a sort of… instruction manual?

She skimmed the table of contents, eyes catching briefly on chapter titles such as "Introduction to Spells & Bindings," "Physical Aids for the Beginner," and "Moulding Granite and Monoliths: On Persuading the Immovable." It had to be some kind of joke or parody. It _had_ to be.

And yet...

Flipping through to the foreword, she began to read.

 _The history of wizardry is nearly as old as the universe itself, and just as complex. Countless ages ago, far back at the Beginning of Things, Life called into existence a host of Powers, charged with managing creation in all its variances. What followed shortly thereafter is a story known and retold throughout the world, familiar to every species that has evolved a sufficient level of sentience to recount stories— and quite a few that have not._

 _You yourself are surely familiar with the old tale. An old Power, greater and more beautiful than Its fellows, but full of pride and envy, who waited until after Its peers had brought forth their own creations to unveil Its own. The contribution this Lone Power made to the universe is, of course, entropy— the slow decay of the universe, the inevitable trickling of sand through the immeasurable hourglass of Time as the finite energy of the worlds is gradually expended— and the final symptom of entropy: Death._

 _And then there was war in heaven and the other Powers cast the Lone One out, but the damage, as all Life can attest, was done. Death is loose in the universe, and entropy is running._

 _That, of course, is why there are wizards— to manage the day to day troubles of the worlds, to slow the rate of entropy in the universe._

It all kind of sounded like religious mumbo-jumbo, as far as Liz was concerned, but she had to admit she was intrigued. She skipped a paragraph or twelve until another phrase caught her eye.

 _Wizards are not born: they are made. Wizardry is a Choice. Nevertheless, certain qualities must be present in the individual for the Choice to be offered, the raw materials, if you will. The very fact that you have come into possession of this manual, that you can see it for what it is, speaks highly of your potential. The Wizard's Manual, in whatever form appropriate for the species of the candidate, will always find its way to those suited for practice of the Art._

Liz's brows drew together. It was Patti who had picked the book up. Maybe this manual had been meant for her?

But no, _she_ was the one who was reading it. _She_ was the one seeing the manual's true form. And maybe Patti would see it, too, if she were the one looking through the careworn pages under the harsh light of their shadeless lamp… but right now, it was in _her_ hands, not Patti's.

The next pages contained a list of qualities often found in potential wizards. There were plenty that Liz did not feel she possessed in any measure, but two in particular stood out.

 _...creativity, even to the point of being cunning…_

 _...the use of the wizardly Speech, the language which all Life understands, is crucial to the practice of the Art, and as such, a gift for persuasiveness is one of the most commonly found traits among wizards…_

She had never considered herself book-smart, but she could talk her way out of the stickiest situations if given enough time, and that in itself took plenty of "creativity."

Despite herself, she was wholly drawn in. She couldn't have explained why if asked, but her natural skepticism was eroded by the eloquent words, stamped in an old typewriter font in faded black ink.

She flipped to the next page. It was blank, except for a bolded heading: **The Wizard's Oath** , and a small block of text, centered on the page.

 _In Life's name, and for Life's sake, I say that I will  
use the Art for nothing but the service of that Life.  
I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve  
what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will  
change no object or creature unless its growth and life,  
or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened.  
To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage,  
and death for life, when it is right to do so—till Universe's end._

Liz tapped her fingers against the page, staring at the printed words until her eyes blurred. The words were heavy, but one part in particular stuck out to her. _Unless the system of which it is part is threatened…_

What was her dysfunctional family if not a 'threatened system'? She couldn't remember a time when things hadn't been fucked up beyond belief, when she hadn't had to worry about whether there was booze in the house or if she was going to have to take Patti to work because their mom was in a Mood. But _change_ , the book said, changing systems that were threatened…

Well, what was the harm? If she said the words and they were just words, nothing would be any worse than it had before. But if it was real, maybe she could fix things. Maybe she could make them rich, or make her mother less of a bitter skank, or… or _something_. The book made it seem like magic was meant for more important things, but what did that matter? What could be more important than giving Patti a safe home to live in?

She heard the water turn off, heard the clatter of the shower door opening, and made her decision. Before Patti could interrupt her, she spoke the words, swift and sure.

Liz wasn't entirely certain, but she thought there might have been the slightest shiver in the air as she finished.

Before she could think any more about it, however, Patti walked through the door, stark naked and dripping.

"I forgot my towel," she announced, perfectly indifferent to the trail of wet footprints she left as she walked over to the closet.

Liz rolled over and shoved her face into her pillow with a groan.


	2. Chapter 2

When she woke up the next morning, Liz was humming with an unfamiliar excitement. Despite the fact that she still felt a bit sticky and gross from work the night before, despite the sour taste in her mouth from not brushing her teeth, she was running on what felt very much like an adrenaline high. She felt as if she had borrowed some of Patti's endless enthusiasm, and for a moment, she couldn't think why. Then she felt something hard poking her from underneath her pillow, and reached in to pull out the book.

She stared at it in astonishment.

It was thicker than it had been the night before, she was absolutely certain. Eight hours ago it had been a slim little thing, barely more than the width of her pinkie finger, but now it was well over an inch thick.

Well, if that wasn't proof that magic was real, she didn't know what was.

 _She was going to be a wizard!_ The thought rammed into her already-jumping nerves and set her whole self bubbling. She had to get out of the house, get some space to really read the manual and figure out how to set the world straight… _her_ part of the world, anyway.

Liz glanced at her sister, who was still fast asleep next to her, hair all mussed up from going to sleep with it still wet. She smiled. Despite how boisterous and vulgar Patti could be— for Liz had failed spectacularly in preventing her from picking up their mom's foul mouth— she really was an angel, and when she was dreaming like this, it showed.

She got up and set about preparing for the day. She slid into her favorite jeans, buttery-soft from wear, and a loose, mint green crop top, appropriate for a day that she could already tell was going to be scorching. A quick brush of her teeth and a coat or three of mascara later, and she felt prepared to face the world (and magic?) head-on.

A walk around the apartment revealed that Roxy had already left for work. Liz was relieved, because she needed to get out of the house, and she wanted to make sure leaving Patti was okay.

Getting her sister up, cajoled into something besides her beloved zebra-print PJs, and plopped in front of the TV with a bowl full of cocoa puffs, took frustratingly long. Liz had never and _would_ never resent her sister, but she needed privacy, and she was impatient. But finally, finally she was on her way out the door.

As she collected her keys from the bowl on the kitchen counter, she called out, "If you get bored, you know where your modeling clay is, right?"

"Right!"

"And if you need anything, Mrs. Martinez—"

"Is right next door, I know!" Patti said.

Liz rolled her eyes, but couldn't quite keep from smiling. Patti knew the drill. They had a standing arrangement with the stay-at-home mother in the apartment next door; Elena Martinez looked out for Patti if Liz couldn't be home, and in exchange, Liz and Patti would deal with Mrs. Martinez's kids if she had to be gone for a couple hours. Patti was plenty old enough to stay home alone, but Liz felt better if there was someone nearby if she needed help.

She wasn't sure how much Mrs. Martinez knew or guessed about their situation— probably a lot because the building's walls were thin— but she kept her mouth shut and doted on Patti nearly as much as she did her own sons, and Liz was grateful for it. The older woman was the closest thing to a real mother figure either of them had.

Luckily for Liz's twitchy impatience, the woman herself was just arriving with an armload of groceries when she turned her key in the lock.

"You'll be needing me to keep an eye out if Patricia needs anything, yes?" she asked, a smile gracing her soft face.

"I'd appreciate it, yeah."

Mrs. Martinez nodded. "Don't you worry then, little Lizzy. How long will you be gone?"

She shrugged. "Not totally sure." She had no idea how long she was going to need. Did working magic take hours to finish a single spell? God, she hoped not. "Work… you know. Might have to pick up an extra shift," she mumbled.

"That is fine. The boys are with my husband's family for the day, so I will just be doing housework."

Liz gave an internal sigh of relief. "Thanks, Mrs. M. My mom should be back from work by four, four-thirty."

"Then perhaps I will invite Patricia over for sopapillas at a quarter to four."

She chuckled. "That might be a good idea. Hopefully I'll be home by then, but—"

"If you're not." The older woman nodded understandingly.

Mrs. Martinez had a hardware-store copy of the key that Liz had gotten for her, and it was times like this that Liz was glad for it. So far it had never been necessary, but it made her feel much safer leaving Patti alone for a couple of hours.

* * *

Once out in the hot early-summer sunshine, Liz found herself at a loss for where to go. Where exactly did one practice wizardry? Standing in a mall parking lot waving a wand seemed like a bad idea. She needed privacy… but where was she supposed to _get_ privacy?

Well, it wasn't really that far to one of the city parks. In the middle of the day like this, _especially_ on a day with temperatures already climbing, it was probably going to be empty.

A quick bus ride and a few minutes' exploration found her the perfect location, concealed behind a row of serviceberry bushes that provided her a decent view of the man-made lake but kept her mostly hidden from unwelcome eyes. She lowered herself down on the dirt, lamenting the fact that the park district hadn't seen fit to lay down sod behind the shrubbery, but leaned against the base of a palm tree nonetheless.

With a sense of excitement she thought she had left behind years ago, she cracked open the book, curious to see what new pages had sprung up overnight.

The book fell open to what appeared, after a short perusal, to be a directory of wizards in the D.C. metro area. To her astonishment, she saw her own name listed there.

 _Thompson, Elizabeth A._  
 _365 S. Rose Avenue, Apt. B_  
 _Death City, NV, 89003_  
 _(Phone unavailable)_

 _Novice rating  
(RL +5.1 +/- 0.3)  
Unavailable: On Ordeal_

She blinked, and was tempted to rub at her eyes to check whether she was seeing things… but no, it was right there in front of her in black and white. She was in the wizardly version of a phone book.

Well, that proved it then, didn't it?

Settling down more comfortably against the tree, she flipped back to chapter one and began to read.

It all seemed pretty straightforward, she discovered as she plowed her way through page after page. At least, theoretically. She got the sense that in practice it was much more complex, but the core idea was simple. The Speech— a wizardly language that everything, apparently, understood— could be used to talk bits of the universe into being other than they were. Convincing a tree to stop heaving up the sidewalk and send its roots somewhere else, getting gravity to temporarily stop functioning locally, slowing down the spread of rust on your car door by talking the oxygen atoms out of bonding with the iron atoms… it all seemed more scientific than magical, when it got right down to it.

Liz had never been any more interested in science than she was in reading, but she'd passed all her science classes right up to the freshman chemistry class she'd taken last year before she dropped. She could handle some basic sciencey shit if the payoff was magic. And if this was so scientific? Then it was time to do some experimenting.

But what should she try first? She should probably start with something small, right? Making it rain or freezing the pond solid both seemed like bad ideas for a first attempt. Something a little less dramatic, just to get the feel for it, seemed like a smarter plan.

She raised a hand and lightly touched the scratch on her cheek from Roxy's ring. It wasn't large but it was deep, and it as she had predicted, the bruised skin around it was tender. Was there a spell for fixing cuts? There had to be, right? Her face was the one thing she had going for her and she really, really didn't want to get a scar.

Liz flipped through the book, looking for an index or something, since the table of contents wasn't very detailed. Once she had located the index, she ran her fingers down the page until she reached the H section, and on the next page, there it was: a page notation for "the Healing Arts," and below it, a list of more specific spells. She turned to the page indicated for "cuts and lacerations" and skimmed the instructions.

It didn't seem too difficult. The directions seemed to be more geared towards healing other people rather than yourself, but she'd figure it out. She needed to trace a circle on the ground, with the names of the healer and the person being healed written into the line, and close it with something called the Wizard's Knot, then recite the words of the spell. Not that difficult at all, really.

The next step in the instructions brought her up short, however. Most medical spells required that the healer shed blood and mingle it with the blood of their patient. She frowned. She didn't have a needle or a knife to make a cut— not that she was keen on the idea to begin with, because didn't that defeat the purpose? Well, she was the one being healed. Wasn't her blood already "mingled" or whatever? It shouldn't be a problem.

Further down the page, below the words of the spell, there was a footnote:

 _As the novice gains proficiency in the Art, the manual will be updated with more efficient spelling protocol for their use._

What the hell did _that_ mean?

Before she could puzzle it out, the words flashed white and vanished from the page.

 _Well okay then._

At least that shed some light on how her information had appeared in the book overnight. It really was magic, wasn't it? But that wasn't important right now. She needed to figure out how to write her name.

With one finger marking the page for the healing spell, she turned back to the alphabet and pronunciation guide for the Speech. She had just found the character that corresponded with the letter L when she paused. Should she be using "Liz" or "Elizabeth?" She tapped her fingers idly against the page as she pondered it. The Speech was supposed to describe the "true essence" of things or whatever, right? And she was really more of a Liz than an Elizabeth… but Elizabeth was her real name. So which one was better to use in the spell?

Opting for caution, she looked up the spelling of her full name as she pulled a pen out of her purse. Not wanting to write on the book, she jotted down the unfamiliar, flowing characters on her palm in purple ink.

This done, she looked back at the spell diagram, studying it to make sure she had memorized what it was supposed to look like. Then she brushed a work area on the ground clear of leaves and stray pebbles and set to work drawing the circle. Scratching lines in the dirt with the butt of her pen, she carved out a quarter-circle that flowed easily into the lines of her name and then out again for a half-circle, with her name repeated directly across from the first one, then another quarter circle back to meet the beginning. She closed it with the Knot the book described, which was a sort of complicated little figure-eight character.

There, that wasn't so hard.

Brushing dirt off her hands, she picked up the manual again. She had intended to write the correct pronunciation of the spell on her hand, too, but when she looked at the page, the pronunciation had appeared beneath the printed words.

"You couldn't have helped me out with my name, too?" she asked, more amused than cross.

She looked over the words, making sure she was comfortable with them before she spoke. It was a short spell compared to some of the ones she had looked at earlier, only thirty-two syllables. It seemed like skin was pretty easy to persuade to quickly re-grow, since growth and change was its natural behavior.

Once she felt confident that she had the words of the spell settled in her mouth, she began to speak. Slowly, carefully, she pronounced each syllable… and after she got the first two or three words out, she got the feeling that she was being _watched_.

It wasn't so much that she felt a person spying on her, but that the universe itself was curving itself over her more closely than usual, observing her as she spoke the spell. She was being _listened to_ , and the feeling was both terrifying and thrilling. She was hyperaware of everything in her immediate surroundings, the physical world standing out with unusual clarity. The sore spot on her cheek tingled as the air grew taut around her, and she grinned, satisfied that the spell was taking hold. She spoke the last word of the spell…

...and was suddenly overwhelmed with dizziness as pain lanced through her cheek, and the breath went out of her.

Liz sat down hard (or rather, she _fell_ down), and sat, wheezing and clutching the manual, in the dirt. She lifted a hand to her cheek and when she pulled her fingers away there was fresh blood on them.

Well _shit_.

"Are you okay?" asked a voice, softened by a slight accent.

Liz twisted around, scrabbling to get to her feet despite her swimming head.

The interloper was an Asian girl— Japanese, she thought, though she wasn't completely sure. She was surprisingly tall, at least as tall as Liz herself, and her wide, blue-violet eyes were warm. Her clothes looked expensive, but her knees were dirty beneath her skirt, as if she'd been kneeling on the ground.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just, um, low blood sugar," Liz lied.

The girl smiled. "You don't have to pretend. I know you were just trying a spell, it's okay."

Liz was somewhat alarmed at the idea that she might have been found by another wizard right in the middle of her first— supremely ineffective— spell, but if she was hearing right, that was exactly what had happened. _Embarrassing_. "Um… so you're a wizard, too, or whatever?"

The stranger held out a book for Liz's inspection. The title was stamped vertically in what were _definitely_ Japanese characters— so that cleared that question up— but Liz recognized immediately that it had to be the same book she was hiding behind her back. Feeling unaccountably shy, she lifted her copy up to show to the other girl.

A gentle smile rose on her lips. "I knew it!" she said. "At first I thought you might just be drawing on the ground, but then you started writing in the Speech…"

"Uh, yeah," Liz said, still wary. "Were you, like, spying on me or something?"

"Not exactly." Her pale cheeks flushed as she averted her eyes, staring down at her own clasped hands. "I didn't want to interrupt, but I haven't met any other wizards our age, and I was curious, so I stayed until you were finished." She looked back up, still blushing, but there was also genuine concern in her eyes. "Are you okay, by the way? It looked like the backlash hit you pretty hard."

Liz shrugged. "I'm okay. Just… I was trying to fix my cut and it looks like it opened back up instead, which is pretty bullshit."

The other girl frowned thoughtfully. "Is that what you were trying to do?"

"Yeah."

"I don't think you can do that. I mean, maybe it's theoretically possible, but I don't know. We could ask Marie about it."

"Who's Marie?"

The girl looked mildly baffled. "Have you not met Marie and Frank yet? They're the senior wizards for the entire western half of the U.S."

Liz was embarrassed. It was similar to the feeling of being called on in class and having no idea what the right answer was. "I just found the manual yesterday," she mumbled awkwardly.

"Oh, so you really are brand new?" she asked.

Liz nodded.

"Don't worry about the spell, then," she said. "I only took the Oath a week ago, and I'm still having some trouble getting the hang of it." A thought seemed to occur to her, and she blushed that pretty pink blush again. "But I've been so rude! I should have introduced myself sooner. My name is Tsubaki Nakatsukasa."

Liz frowned. _That_ was certainly a mouthful. And wasn't there something funny about Japanese names? Like they were backwards or something? She'd seen something on TV about that but she couldn't remember for sure. "Uh… which one is your first name?" she asked, hoping she wouldn't accidentally offend the other girl.

That sweet smile turned a little amused. "Tsubaki," she said, and Liz got the idea that she was probably being laughed at. It was, surprisingly, only partially annoying.

"That's pretty," Liz said. _She_ was pretty— beautiful, actually— with her soft, lovely face and a waterfall of thick, shiny black hair that fell to her waist. Liz was going to have to get the name of whoever did her nails, too, because hands like that would almost be worth blowing two shifts' worth of pay for. Before she could get caught staring and make things awkward, she cleared her throat and said, "I'm Liz, by the way."

"Well then, Liz, would you like to come meet our seniors? Marie is very good with healing spells, she can probably do something about your cut," Tsubaki said, jerking her head back towards the gravel path on the other side of the serviceberry hedge.

Liz hesitated. She'd been here with her nose in the manual for probably an hour and a half already, maybe longer, and if she was going to get any more practice in before she had to be home with Patti, she should probably get to it… but then again, it couldn't hurt to meet these people, right? She might be able to get good at this wizardry thing faster with a few pro tips.

"Sure," she said with a shrug. "Why the hell not."

* * *

Tsubaki, as it turned out, had a _car_. Not a fancy one, granted, but it was nice enough to make Liz drool with envy. She was a few months older than Liz and had gotten her license _and_ the car on her birthday. Internally, Liz was shaking her head. She hadn't even been able to get her permit because her mom wouldn't pay the application fees, but this girl got a car just like that?

 _Rich people_.

Tsubaki seemed comfortable with being quiet and not making the silence awkward, which Liz appreciated. Forcing small talk with strangers she didn't give a shit about wasn't exactly her style. The fact that her new acquaintance-slash-chauffeur just put on the radio— top forties stuff, but Liz didn't mind breaking up her Bill Evans with a little Ke$ha now and again— and drove made Liz instantly like her more.

Eventually, though, she did speak up and ask, "So, you don't go to Sarah Miller, do you?"

"That private school on Cherry Avenue?" Liz scoffed. "Tchyeah, no way."

Tsubaki gave her a wary glance out of the corner of her eye, but only said, "I didn't think so. I never saw you around campus."

"Public school for me all the way," Liz proclaimed, as a matter of pride. Admittedly it was only half-true, seeing as she hadn't been in a classroom for months, but she'd gotten this far in life without going to some fancy-schmancy all-girls school that probably cost more than she'd made in the entire time she'd been working at Starbucks. That was worth something, dammit.

"I went to public school up until middle school. Then I guess my dad got a little paranoid that I wouldn't be able to get into a good college. I don't know why he's so worried, my older brother never went to private school and he got into CalTech."

Liz only just barely managed to keep a look of open contempt off her face as Tsubaki spoke. Did people really live that kind of life outside of TV? This girl _had_ to be joking. "That's… cool," she said, and was pleased that she'd managed to tone the derision in her voice down so that it sounded more like skepticism.

Tsubaki, sweet summer child that she was, seemed to misunderstand her completely. "Masamune sure doesn't think so," she said with a laugh. "Ever since he got his acceptance letter he's been down about moving away, even if it is only as far as Pasadena."

"Yeah, must be real rough," Liz drawled. The idea that anyone would throw a hissy fit over having to move hours from their parents struck her as hilarious… and _disgusting_. If she could afford to go to some schmancy college in Cali and live so far away from this shithole of a town…

She shut her mouth before she said something nasty about her new acquaintance's brother.

It was only about ten or fifteen miles from the park to the house that Tsubaki proclaimed was owned by the Senior wizards, but with the lunch hour traffic clogging up the streets, it took them awhile to get there. Once Tsubaki opened up the floor for conversation, Liz found she didn't mind talking to her so much. She wasn't obnoxious and pushy like most people, and didn't seem to need to share her entire life story with every stranger she met. She knew how to _listen_ , not just how to to talk.

Unfortunately, the result of that was that Liz ended up feeling more than usually comfortable sharing herself.

"I wasn't born in D.C. either," she found herself saying in response to Tsubaki's story about a childhood trip back to Japan to visit her family overseas. "My mom and I lived in Brooklyn when I was a little kid, but then she got pregnant with Patti and—"

"And what?" Tsubaki prompted.

The gentle probing, even in that sweet voice of hers, was enough to put Liz back on alert. What the hell was she _doing_ telling this random girl this kind of shit?

"And she decided that she hated the weather on the East Coast too much to go through another pregnancy there, so she moved us to Nevada," Liz said, tone sharp. Tsubaki didn't need to know her whole tragic backstory. Wasn't any of her damn business.

When Tsubaki slid into a parallel park so perfect a stunt driver couldn't have pulled it off more smoothly, Liz practically leapt from the car. This girl was a little too damn good at being a sympathetic listener, and Liz wasn't a fan. She couldn't help but wonder what she was hoping to gain by being so nice.

"It's this one," Tsubaki said, pointing at a two-story home a little down the block from where they had parked.

Liz looked up at the house skeptically. The bones of the building were good. In fact, it was a pretty ritzy place… if you ignored the peeling paint that had fallen off here and there in long strips like stitches, the cracks in the sidewalk, and the fact that even though it was only spring, the sod had already gone yellow from neglect and dehydration. It wasn't even remotely impressive.

"You said wizards live _here?_ "

Tsubaki nodded. "The architecture is interesting, isn't it?"

 _Jesus_ , this girl was _disgustingly_ optimistic, wasn't she? Liz had known her all of half an hour, but she was already sure Tsubaki was incapable of being negative about anything. Well, that was what happened when you grew up rich— or at least middle class, which was basically the same thing. Liz had had her rose-tinted lenses smashed a long time ago; Tsubaki would get her bitter wake-up call one of these days.

It was almost a shame, though. Her cheerfulness was kinda refreshing.

Tsubaki rang the doorbell, and they only had to wait a few moments before the front door burst open with unusual enthusiasm considering no one was there to open it.

Liz found herself a bit reluctant to just walk in, but Tsubaki stepped over the threshold with no hesitation, so she had no choice but to follow.

The inside, thankfully, was in much better shape than the outside. The front hallway had been painted a cheerful yellow, and the floor was some kind of pretty, amber-stained hardwood.

"Who is it?" a female voice called out.

"It's Tsubaki, Marie!"

A diminutive woman came hurrying out into the hall, drying her hands on a dishtowel. She wasn't exactly what Liz had pictured when Tsubaki had said they were going to meet Senior wizards. She'd been expecting some wise old man and woman with matching silver hair and frogs or ravens perched on their shoulder. Instead, this Marie turned out to be a pretty woman, only about thirty years old or so, with hair the color of autumn sunlight, wearing a floral dress and a smile.

"Tsubaki!" she exclaimed. "I didn't think we'd be seeing you today."

"I wasn't planning on coming," Tsubaki said, bending over to slip off her shoes. "I know you're busy and I would hate to make a nuisance of myself, but then I met Liz, and—" She shrugged. "Here we are!"

Marie turned to look up at Liz, and her smile widened. "You must be Elizabeth Thompson, then?"

Well _that_ was creepy. "Um… yes? How did you—"

"Oh, your name popped up in the manual directory this morning," Marie said. "I have it set to notify me every time a new wizard takes their Oath in our jurisdiction." She went whirling out of the hallway and into what appeared to be some kind of sitting room, sweeping Liz and Tsubaki along in her wake and continuing to speak to them over her shoulder as she walked along without paying attention to where she was going. "There's only so much I can do, since Frank and I manage such a large area that it would be nearly impossible to meet _everyone_ personally without some frivolous use of time travel, and wasting the energy would be... but that's no matter. Whenever a new novice pops up in the D.C. metro area, I do my best to try to meet them, preferably before their Ordeal starts." She guided them into the kitchen and quite literally pushed them into chairs across from each other at the scrubbed maplewood table. Liz shook off her hand irritably, but she didn't seem to notice.

"My husband is so esoteric," she continued cheerfully, "but I like to be more hands-on and really get to know as many of the North American team as I can. It feels so much more in the spirit of wizardry than hiding away and researching like some people I could mention." She rolled her eyes good-naturedly as Tsubaki giggled.

"Oh, but I'm forgetting myself!" the petite woman added. "My name is Marie Stein, I'm one of four Seniors handling North America."

"Liz. But you knew that," she responded. "You talk a lot."

Marie waved her hand in rueful acknowledgement. "My husband says the same thing," she said, and Liz decided she liked the blasé response to her belligerence. Marie might look like a bit of a postmodern flower child, but she didn't have delicate little feelings to match.

"Speaking of which—" She poked her head through the other doorway that led out of the kitchen and down a set of back stairs. "Frank, will you come up here? Elizabeth Thompson's come to see us!"

An unintelligible voice called something back, which Marie seemed to take as an acceptable reply. "Now then, let's take a look at that eye of yours," she said, sitting down between Liz and Tsubaki.

"Tsubaki said you might be able to fix it," Liz ventured.

Marie waved a hand. "Oh of course, dear. There's no _might_ about it. I'm rather good at healing, always have been. We'll have you fixed right up."

She reached out a hand toward Liz's face, and Liz instinctively jerked back. Something in Marie's eyes softened. "Is it alright if I touch you, Elizabeth?"

"Uh. Yeah." Belated or not, it was nice that she asked. Liz grit her teeth and forced herself to lean forward slightly so that Marie could reach her. She placed one hand on top of her head to keep her still, and the fingertips of her other hand lightly brushed the area beneath the cut. Liz was proud of herself for not flinching when Marie pulled her head down to eye-level.

"Ooh, this has been reopened," Marie clucked. "Were you trying to heal this yourself?"

Across the table, Tsubaki nodded. "That's part of why I brought her over."

Marie smiled. "Self-healing _is_ possible, but not usually advisable," she said. "The entropic cost to heal comes from the healer, and in doing so you're usually robbing your own body of the energy it needs to accept the healing."

" _Huh?_ " Liz didn't generally think of herself as stupid, but she felt pretty lost at the moment.

But Marie just chuckled. "Don't worry, you'll have a good grasp of all the theoretical stuff soon enough. But right now, let's just focus on getting you patched up." She held out her hand and made a twisting motion with her fingers; a cutlery drawer sprang open and what seemed to be a scalpel emerged and flew unerringly into Marie's palm.

"I'm guessing if you tried to heal that thing yourself, you're already aware that healing lacerations and cuts requires mingling blood, yes?" she asked. At Liz's nod, she continued, "I hope you won't mind, then, if I—"

"Sure, whatever."

Marie slashed the tip of her index finger across the blade of the scalpel and with the same motion, pressed the drop of blood that formed to the cut on Liz's cheek. She recited a rush of words in the Speech— words that Liz could almost, _almost_ understand— and even though she wasn't the one speaking the spell, she could still feel the universe go quiet to listen. Liz's skin flashed hot, then cold, and when Marie took her hand back barely twenty seconds later, she didn't need a mirror to know that the cut had healed and most likely the bruise had faded as well. Likewise, the cut Marie had made to her finger was gone as if it had never existed.

"That was…" Liz wasn't sure what she wanted to say, so after a breath of mental floundering, she continued: "... _way_ simpler than what I tried."

"Wizardry gets easier and also much harder the longer you practice the Art," she replied with a nod. "You're young, still. By the time you get to be my age, you won't need to lay out a spell diagram for something as small as healing up a cut. But don't go trying that sort of thing at your age!" She waved a cautionary finger at her. "You kids may have all the power in the world right now, but the kind of finesse to do even simple spells without a diagram is well beyond your experience!"

There was an awful lot of information to process in there, so Liz focused on what she considered the most interesting tidbit. "What do you mean 'all the power in the world right now'?" she asked.

"Wizards are usually at the peak of their power during the first six months after taking their Oath," a male voice replied.

Liz whipped around to find a gargantuan man standing in the kitchen's second doorway. He wore enormous wire-rimmed glasses, and his prematurely-grey hair was a mess falling in his eyes. The dark grey color of his sweater— and about that, a sweater, in Nevada, in May? _seriously?_ — could not quite conceal the purplish smears of… _something_ across his chest. The same substance ran in rivulets down his fingers.

"Oh lord, Frank, what've you done now?" Marie asked with a sigh. "I've told you before, if you insist on making a mess of yourself, at least put on a clean shirt before coming up to meet guests!"

He grinned, clearly unapologetic. "Just a little bit of a backfire. I was attempting to study the effects of a localized timeslide on that crate of black plums your Aunt Julie shipped to us and misplaced a decimal point."

Marie slapped a hand to her forehead and sighed. "Well, Liz, I'm sorry you had to meet him this way, but this is my husband, Frank Stein. He's been doing time travel and timeslide research for the last four years, and unfortunately, he gets a bit… carried away."

"All in the name of science and wizardry, my dear!" he said cheekily, and meandered over to the sink to rinse what Liz assumed must be plum juice— or something that _used_ to be plum juice— off his hands.

Marie rolled her eyes.

"As I was saying," Frank continued, "your power levels will fluctuate here and there throughout your lifetime, though they'll likely be reasonably stable once you hit your 20s. But during the first few months after a wizard takes their Oath is unquestionably their strongest time— as far as sheer power goes, of course. There's a lot to be said for finesse and experience."

Liz frowned. If her plan was to use wizardry to deal with Roxanne and get herself and Patti into a better situation, a few months was not a lot of time to accomplish that. She'd never worked well under deadlines. "That seems kind of backwards, doesn't it? I'd think someone would get _more_ powerful the longer they were a wizard, not _less_."

"There are plenty of theories about why it works this way," Frank said, "but the fact remains that that's how it is. The younger a wizard takes their Oath, too, the higher their power levels generally are during their novice days."

"Tsubaki being a rare exception," Marie added.

All three turned to look at her, and Tsubaki, who had been fairly quiet since they arrived, shrank down in her seat and averted her eyes, blushing brilliantly. "It's not really _that_ strange, is it?" she asked, staring down at her knees. "I know you said before I was unusual, but—"

"You've got power ratings like a twelve year old," Frank said when she broke off. "It's not completely unheard of, but it's definitely a huge deviation from the norm. You're sixteen, your levels should be in a fairly low range, something closer to Elizabeth's—"

"Hey!" Liz protested.

"Well, it's true," Frank said smoothly. "But Tsubaki… well, with her power levels, and at her age, no less, my guess is that her Ordeal will likely involve a direct confrontation with the Lone Power."

Tsubaki looked alarmed. "I don't know if I'm ready for anything like that!"

Marie patted her shoulder sympathetically. "I wouldn't be too anxious about it. We wizards have been fighting the Lone One since Time began. You're strong, so just learn all you can until it starts. That will give you the best chance of being successful."

"About this 'Ordeal' thing," Liz interjected, "Tsubaki made it sound like it was a pretty, um, intense deal."

Marie shrugged. "Each Ordeal is unique to the wizard," she said. "Sometimes it can involve personally confronting the Lone One, but sometimes it's much more subtle than that. Either way, each wizard is offered the Oath because they're the right person to fix a problem somewhere in the world."

"Yep, sounds pretty intense," Liz said dryly. "Any hints on when I should be expecting this "test" to start?"

"It can start at any time, from what I've read," Tsubaki said. She looked to Marie for confirmation. "Right?"

Marie nodded. "My best advice to you both is to be extra careful until it's over. Paying back the energy the universe has invested in you is important, but coming through your Ordeal to continue practicing the Art as a mature wizard is even more important.

"Now, let's stop with all this heavy conversation," she said, getting to her feet and brushing the wrinkles from her skirt. "Can I interest you girls in some iced tea and lemon bars?"

Liz was never one to turn down free food, but a quick glance at the clock told her it was going on three-thirty, and Roxy was going to be home in an hour. "No thanks," she said. "I'm supposed to be home soon."

"Next time, then," she said cheerfully.

"I should probably go, too," Tsubaki said. "My parents will worry if I'm gone much longer."

Both of them got to their feet and prepared to leave. Tsubaki paused in the kitchen doorway and turned back to offer a tiny bow, hands clasped in front of her. "Thank you for healing Liz's injury, Marie!" she said earnestly.

Liz couldn't decide whether she felt grateful that Tsubaki had covered for her, or annoyed that she'd drawn such attention to her lack of manners. "Yeah, thanks," she muttered, aware that she was probably pink in the face.

Together they turned back and walked through the living room towards the front door, but Frank followed and caught Liz's elbow, pulling her to a stop. Liz jerked out of his grasp, and at Tsubaki's questioning look, she motioned that she should go on ahead.

"What?" she asked, staring up at Frank suspiciously.

"I just wanted to make sure you understand that wizardry isn't a quick fix," he said in a low voice, his glasses flashing in the light from the front window. His expression was unsettlingly dark. "It's a gift, and being able to use it to help those you care for, and yourself as well, is an excellent side benefit, but that's all that is— just a perk. Being a wizard is a serious responsibility."

"...Yeah, I get that," she muttered, looking down. "Why are you telling me this?"

His demeanor changed abruptly and suddenly he was full of good cheer. "Oh, just a little speech I like to give the newbies I meet!" he said brightly.

"Is it now." Liz somehow didn't think that was entirely true. She rubbed at her arm absentmindedly. "Alright, well, um, I gotta go. So. Bye."

"Visit anytime!" he said with an enormous smile and a jaunty wave.

Liz gave a half-hearted flop of her hand in return and all but fled out to the hallway, where Tsubaki was just finishing with lacing up her shoes.

"What did Frank want?" she asked.

"Eh, just giving me some… words of wisdom," Liz said.

As they descended the front steps and headed back up the Steins' front walk, Tsubaki asked, "Hey, do you want to practice, together? Practice wizardry, I mean?" Before Liz could say anything, she pinked up and added, "I don't mean becoming permanent partners, not if you don't want that, but I was thinking… it might be helpful to have someone to work with while we're just starting out?"

Liz frowned. "Lemme think about it."

"Okay. Want to trade numbers, then?" she asked eagerly.

"Don't have a phone, sorry," Liz replied. Technically their apartment did have a phone, but no way in hell was she giving _anyone_ that number. But when Tsubaki's expression fell, Liz found herself reluctant to disappoint her, and with an internal sigh, she added, "Maybe just give me your number? I can call you from a payphone or my mom's landline."

Tsubaki brightened. "That would work!"

Liz nodded, and held out her hand for Tsubaki to write her number down.

This day had been full of surprises, she thought, and she wasn't entirely certain that all of them were pleasant. There was clearly a lot more to this than she had assumed when she had taken the Oath on a whim last night, and she thought she just might have gotten herself in over her head.

Still… who knew? It had to be worth it in the end.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note-** This chapter contains two unpleasant things. The first is a single line of dialogue in Japanese courtesy of Google translate (ugh) and the second is the worst of the domestic violence that occurs in this fic. The latter is at the end, so if you are interested in reading this fic but don't want to read that, just skip the last scene.

* * *

Liz found, upon contemplation, that she couldn't resist Tsubaki's offer of assistance in learning the basics of wizardry. She had always had to make it on her own, but she wasn't about to pass up an opportunity to get ahead when it was practically handed to her on a naive, overly-trusting silver platter.

Well, maybe that was unfair. Tsubaki _was_ pretty sheltered, but she wasn't completely naive. Operative word being "completely."

Ah, whatever. She was sweet, and she didn't seem to mind showing Liz everything that she'd learned.

It was kind of ridiculous how much she _had_ learned, actually. Tsubaki said she had only been a wizard for about a week before Liz picked up her manual, but it seemed to have put her lightyears ahead. While Liz was stuck using physical aids like orange peels and men's leather shoes pulled from the 50¢ bin at Goodwill, Tsubaki was walking effortlessly on water. Liz kind of wanted to hate her for it, but Tsubaki made it _so damn hard_ to dislike her.

It wasn't even that she was nice. Liz had disliked a hell of a lot of nice people. Tsubaki was just genuinely _kind_ , and the sincerity made it nearly impossible to be bitter over her. So even though watching her work sometimes made Liz want to scream in sheer frustration, she also found that she was kind of fun to have around.

Plus, her wizardly tutoring was definitely a perk. Meeting up almost every day at the same park where they'd met became a habit over the next week.

They'd been focusing on suspending gravity, since it was apparently one of the easiest laws of physics to manipulate or something. It came easily to Tsubaki, with her seemingly limitless power, but Liz was, for lack of a better world, _struggling_.

"Goddammit!" she burst out, as the small stone she was trying to levitate shattered instead. "What am I doing wrong? I didn't pronounce the name of the rock wrong again, did I?"

Tsubaki glanced at her manual and shook her head with a frown. "I don't understand. A spell always works! That's one of the basic tenets of wizardry."

"Then why isn't it _working?_ " Liz growled in frustration.

The other girl's expression turned pensive. "Maybe you've got some kind of mental block?" she speculated. "A huge part of this work is the wizard's _intent_ , according to Marie. Are you really, um… what I mean to ask is, do you really believe in the spell? Are you truly putting your heart behind it?"

If Liz was honest, the answer was probably no. Ever since her first attempt at a spell had been a flop, she'd had a hard time believing that she was really cut out for this. Sure as hell wasn't going to make her give up, but it did make it difficult to just let go and give herself over to the wizardry the way Tsubaki seemed to do so effortlessly.

"Yeah, sure, of course," she said. "'Wizardry does not live in the unwilling heart,' right? That's what the book said."

Tsubaki nodded. "Right. That's why most human wizards are offered the Oath around thirteen or fourteen. The Powers That Be seem to want kids to have normal childhoods as much as possible, but the younger someone is, the easier suspension of disbelief is. That's why—"

"—why younger wizards are more powerful and you're so special because you took the Oath at sixteen but you're still crazy powerful for some reason, blah blah blah I know," Liz said derisively. "I've read the book, too." _Not that the manual was easy to fully read since it kept fucking_ changing _all the time_.

Tsubaki looked taken aback at her harsh tone. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to lecture. Of course you already know all this."

 _Jesus_ it was hard to stay mad at her. "Yeah. S'fine," she mumbled. "I'm just frustrated." It was a hard thing to admit, but Liz felt bad for snapping at her… especially when she was pretty sure she was right. Her confidence was lukewarm, so her spells only half-worked, which was _complete bullshit_ in her opinion.

But Tsubaki seemed to understand anyway. Her expression was empathetic and her skin was warm as she leaned forward to press Liz's hand kindly. "I know you'll get the hang of it," she said. "The Powers offered you wizardry for a reason, Liz. Somewhere in the universe there's a problem, and you're the solution."

Her intensity was too much, and Liz pulled her hand back. Tsubaki obviously noticed, but she said nothing, and her expression went blank.

Liz felt tension creeping up into the space between them, and rushed to fill the gap before it suffocated them. "Yeah, I'll figure it out. I mean, I'm getting pretty good with the Speech, it's only a matter of time, right?"

Tsubaki nodded, that soft smile of hers making a reappearance. "Yeah, you're picking that up so fast! You only took your Oath a couple days ago and I think you're already better than I am."

It was probably just a token compliment to pacify her, but coming from Tsubaki, it didn't sound like it. She always seemed so _genuine_ that it was hard not to trust what she said.

Liz found it highly unnerving.

The benefits of having a nauseatingly sweet friend might be dubious, but the benefits of having a friend with a _car_ were not. That in and of itself was justification to keep associating with Tsubaki. The free rides were fabulous, and Liz was determined never to pay for bus fare again.

Following their latest practice, Tsubaki dropped her off at the apartment after an intense afternoon of spelling— or attempting to, on Liz's part— left her too tired to walk back.

"Listen, maybe tomorrow we can try something else?" Tsubaki suggested as she pulled up in front of the apartment. "We could just… hang out, maybe?" Her big amethyst eyes were hopeful, and even though Liz knew she should refuse, because she didn't know Roxanne's work schedule tomorrow, she couldn't bring herself to disappoint her.

"I'm… not sure if I'll be free," she said slowly. "I've gotta work until eleven, but maybe after. Tell you what, stop by the Starbucks on Oakland at like five after and I'll let you know."

That worked, right? If she needed to be home with Patti, she could bum a ride and not sweat through her clothes walking home, and if their mother was going to be at work in the afternoon, hanging out sounded kind of nice. She hadn't just chilled with a friend in the longest time.

Tsubaki nodded. "That sounds good. I'll see you then?"

"Yeah. See you then."

The apartment was malodorous again when Liz opened the door, and her stomach sank when she saw her mother standing by the window, arms crossed with a cigarette dangling in one hand. Roxy was, clearly, home early.

 _Crap_.

"Who just dropped you off?" Roxy demanded.

"Nobody," Liz replied sullenly. But she knew that wouldn't get Roxy off her back, so she added, "A friend."

She snorted. "You've got friends?"

"Brilliant comeback, does the diner have you doing standup instead of waitressing now?" Liz muttered.

Roxy's eyes narrowed and she stepped away from the window, walking closer to her daughter. "This 'friend' is a guy, isn't it?" she asked, ignoring Liz's sarcasm.

"No."

"It _is!_ You're sneaking around having sex!"

Liz actually laughed at that. "Oh _please_ ," she said. "I'm not you."

The look on her mother's face was odd, a ruinous sort of anger Liz didn't think she'd ever seen Roxy wear before. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" she growled, leaning in so close to Liz's face that the reek of stale smoke on her breath overpowered the lit cigarette in her hand.

She shrugged, and leaned away with a wrinkled nose. "You tell me, you're the one fucking randos every other night," she said, thoroughly disgusted.

Roxy's hand shot out and she yanked hard on Liz's hair, tilting her head back painfully. "You don't know _shit_ , you fucking brat," she hissed. "I'm sick and fucking tired of you judging me."

Liz grabbed her own hair above her mother's hand and pulled herself free. "Don't touch me," she snapped. She whirled and marched across to her bedroom door, pausing as she grabbed the handle. "And don't smoke in the house, asshole, Patti doesn't need to breathe that shit in." She hauled the door open, then slammed it behind her.

Patti was sitting on her beanbag chair, chin resting on her crossed arms on the windowsill.

"Whatcha lookin' at, Jellybean?" Liz asked.

"There's a bird that made a nest in Caroline's petunia basket," Patti said. "I didn't notice until today."

Peering over her head, Liz repressed a snort. The neighbor whose apartment shared a yard with their building hadn't actually planted anything in her hanging basket in years. Non-native flowers wilted in the course of an hour during a Death City summer, even in the shade. But Patti was right, some hapless bird had taken advantage of the space, and a pair of ugly little fledglings were lying in the nest. One of them was perched dangerously on the edge of the basket, flapping it's underdeveloped wings wildly and ineffectively.

Together, they watched the little bird's faltering attempts for a few moments more; then Patti said, "I wish you and Mom wouldn't yell."

Liz sighed. "I wish that, too."

"It's not gonna stop, though, is it?"

"I doubt it, kiddo." Roxy was Roxy, and Liz had an apparently pathological urge to wind her up.

It was almost funny, she thought. Now that she knew about the Lone Power, knew what to look for, she could see so much of Its influence in her own life.

Unless the bitch suddenly grew up— or at least grew a conscience— or Liz suddenly lost all of her scrappy willpower, they were going to be clashing until Liz was old enough to get out on her own and take Patti with her. Sometimes, Liz wondered if she was getting a little too old to keep picking fights with everybody, but it didn't really matter, did it? The world wasn't fair, and she'd never been able to make herself lie back and accept it. That went double when it came to her mother. Roxy was supposed to take care of them, to _protect_ them, but she never had. Maybe things had been different back in Brooklyn, back before Roxy got pregnant and chased the religious bastard who did it to the other side of the country, only to get dumped when he told her the reason he had moved west was because he had been called to the altar of his Lord Lucifer. But if it _had_ been different before that, Liz couldn't remember it. Her early life was mostly a blur, and her first truly clear memory was the day Patti was born. As far as Liz was concerned, Roxy has never been anything other than what she was now.

"The Lone One's got a real bad hold on you," she muttered.

"What?"

Liz blinked and looked down at Patti, who was watching her with wide eyes. "Nothing, Patti. Just thinking out loud, I guess."

"Okay!" Patti chirped, and went back to bird-watching.

With a heavy sigh, Liz left her to it; she walked over to the mattress, flopped down, and cracked open her manual to a page at random.

* * *

As it transpired, Roxy _was_ going to be home the next afternoon, but Patti was going to a friend's house for a sleepover— something Liz would really have liked to know about _before_ said friend's parents came to pick her up, but whatever— so it didn't matter.

Liz was surprised at how delighted she felt at the news. She hadn't realized how much she was looking forward to spending the afternoon with Tsubaki until it was a fixed plan. Somehow the soft-hearted girl had grown on her, and Liz couldn't even say she minded that much. There were worse things than having sweet, ridiculously hot friends with transportation.

Tsubaki picked her up after work as planned, though Liz found herself sweating on the sidewalk for nearly ten minutes after their arranged meeting time.

"What kept you?" Liz asked as she slid into the mercifully air-conditioned car.

Tsubaki looked pensive. "I had to tell my parents about me being a wizard," she said.

Liz blinked. "What? Why?"

She shrugged. "They noticed I'd been gone a lot and… well, Asian parents, you know?"

Liz didn't know, but she nodded anyway. She didn't bother to ask why Tsubaki hadn't just lied to them— Tsubaki's home life, she knew, was a thousand miles removed from her own. Besides, the girl was probably constitutionally incapable of deliberately misleading someone.

"Anyway, remember how I said I thought one of my parents might be a wizard since I found my manual on their bookshelf?" Tsubaki continued as she put the car in gear and pulled away from the strip mall Starbucks. "I was right. The manual used to be my mother's."

"Used to be?" Liz asked. "What, did she give up the practice or something?"

Tsubaki shook her head. "She just doesn't use the manual anymore. There are a lot of wizards who don't, actually, or at least, not in book form. Whales get their version directly from the Ocean, I guess, and even in some human cultures, nobody ever uses the manual at all, they just memorize all their spells."

"Wow," Liz said, choosing to ignore the mention of whale wizards because that was _way_ more than she was currently ready to process. "Sounds… rough."

"I think it would be useful, actually." Tsubaki sounded thoughtful, but as she slowed for a stop sign, she shook her head again and sighed. "Anyway, I would have been here on time, but my brother didn't take it so well." She was silent for another long moment before she added, "I guess he figured out mama was— well, he didn't know about wizardry or anything, but when he was little he saw some of her spells by accident. I think he thought he was going to learn when he grew up. Except…"

"Except that you're already pretty old to be a novice wizard and he's like two years older, right?" Liz guessed.

Tsubaki nodded, lips pressed tight in a worried frown. She was silent for several blocks, and Liz wondered at the situation. Tsubaki's life seemed so backwards to her. She had some kind of unnatural, freakishly good relationship with her parents, but her brother didn't support her. It made no sense. If Patti had been the one to take the Oath and become a wizard instead of herself, she would have been thrilled. Terrified for her safety, sure, but happy to cheer her baby sister on. And here Tsubaki's brother was, pitching a hissy fit— from what she could read between the lines, anyway— because Tsubaki had gotten the magic instead of him.

But tense silence wasn't going to do anything to perk up Tsubaki's mood, and it was seriously killing Liz's enthusiasm for this whole outing before it had even started.

"Anyway, what did you want to do today?" she asked.

It was amazing how she could actually see Tsubaki pull herself together and put on a happy face. Liz couldn't decide if it was a good thing or not. "I was thinking maybe we could go to the mall?" she suggested. "There aren't really any good movies out right now and it's too late in the day to make driving out of the city worth it."

Liz felt her stomach sink. "I dunno, I mean… I don't really have much money to spend," she said slowly.

Tsubaki was smiling, though. "Looking at things you can't afford is half the fun, though!"

 _Spoken like someone who actually had anything she actually_ could _afford._

She seemed to sense Liz's continued reluctance, and took her eyes off the road at a red light to give her a reassuring smile. "If you don't want to, we can do something else," she said. "I just thought… well, I'm pretty sure we could figure out how to change our own clothes with wizardry. Just rearrange the molecular structure of a garment to turn it into something different."

"What happened to this being a wizardry-free day?" Liz asked dryly.

Tsubaki's smile was just a bit mischievous. "Oh, it will be. But getting ideas for later can't hurt, right?"

Liz glanced down at the tangerine tube top and tattered jeans she'd changed into after work; the idea of swapping them out for a Chanel replica without having to spend a dime was _deeply_ appealing. It might be a frivolous use of wizardry, but what was the point of being a wizard if you couldn't do nice things for yourself? God knew that was why Liz had signed her name on the metaphorical dotted line.

"Sounds like a plan to me!"

* * *

Three hours, four department stores, and countless changing room cell phone fashion shoots later, they were headed to Tsubaki's house for an extremely belated lunch. There were, in fact, a few shopping bags in the backseat, despite Tsubaki's initial assertion that they wouldn't buy anything. But she hadn't been able to resist a new summer scarf, and when she caught Liz throwing longing glances at a pair of disgustingly gorgeous leather boots, she'd thought nothing of buying them for her.

 _Rich people._ But Liz wasn't going to complain. If anyone wanted to buy her stuff, she was definitely going to let them.

Tsubaki's house was nice. It wasn't, like, a mansion or anything, but it was a nice, two-story house in a nice, middle-class neighborhood. All tidy lawns, shiny cars parked in driveways, lots of trees leaning out over the sidewalk. Very pretty, very _clean_.

Liz was willing to bet, from the instant she walked in the door and saw that the entryway was paved with tile instead of carpet or linoleum, that even the microwave cost more than she made in three months. She had sort of been expecting paper walls and sliding doors like she'd seen on TV, but it was a western-style home, though from the moment she stepped in the door it was obvious that it had been decorated with the family's culture in mind.

"Let's go to the kitchen, I'll see what we have in the fridge," Tsubaki said.

In the kitchen, a boy a few years older stood staring into the open fridge, wearing nothing but a pair of black boxers.

Tsubaki dropped her face into her palm with a heavy sigh. "Masamune, why are you naked in the kitchen at two in the afternoon?"

He grabbed a soda and a bottle of cherry syrup out of the fridge and shut it, straightening up with a lithe kind of grace. He was strikingly handsome, with intense black eyes and a jawline that looked like it could cut diamonds. There was a family resemblance between him and Tsubaki, but where she had a flowery elegance about her, he was all planes and angles, as if he'd been sculpted from stone.

"Atsuidesu. Sore wa tonikaku, jibun no iedesu," he said, and even with the language barrier, Liz could hear the belligerence in his tone.

Tsubaki's eyes narrowed, and Liz thought it might be the first time she had ever looked anything less than poised and sweet. _Interesting_. "Speak English," she said. "You're being rude to our guest."

Masamune shrugged. "Hello, wizard sister. I'm guessing this is your wizard friend?" He put a noticeable emphasis on the word _wizard_ , and Liz remembered Tsubaki saying that he wasn't pleased that she had been the one to be offered the Oath.

"This is Elizabeth Thompson," she said stonily. "And _yes_ , she is a wizard, too." She turned back to Liz and her eyes softened back to the gentle warmth Liz had gotten used to seeing from her. "Liz, this is my brother, Masamune."

He had turned away before Tsubaki even finished the introduction, apparently ignoring her in favor of pouring both soda and syrup into a glass. He stirred it up with a spoon, then left both spoon and open bottle of syrup on the counter; he walked past them without another word, jostling his sister slightly as he passed.

Tsubaki sighed, shoulders slumping. "I'm so sorry. I promise he's not usually like this. I guess he's still angry from this morning."

Liz nodded as Tsubaki walked over to the counter where her brother had left his stuff. "Guess sibling rivalry is a thing, sometimes. I can't really empathize— my baby sister is… kind of my whole world."

"That's nice," Tsubaki said, a smile blooming on her face again, though not as brightly as the one she had worn a few minutes earlier. "Masamune and I were close as kids, but maybe we've drifted apart more than I realized." She was silent for a moment as she tucked the cherry syrup back into the fridge, then straightened up. "But I don't really want to talk about him right now. What did you want to eat?"

Five minutes later, once they had set themselves up with sandwiches, Tsubaki led her out the back door so that they could sit on the low porch behind the house. They munched on sandwiches in comfortable silence, and Liz admired the Nakatsukasas' back yard. It was a far cry from the sun-bleached patch of scraggly grass behind her own building, with a miniature palm tree and a little stone fountain that was probably a bitch to keep filled in the summer.

"I was thinking," Tsubaki said, munching idly on her sandwich, "maybe there's a way to help you get over your mental block. With the wizardry, I mean."

Liz looked over at her curiously. Tsubaki set her sandwich aside and leaned back on her hands, her long hair brushing against the stained wood of the porch. The afternoon light caught in the shiny black strands, setting her hair afire as if she'd woven a net of sunlight into it. She really was beautiful, Liz thought.

Unaware that she was being admired, Tsubaki continued, "When I first started out, I didn't immediately jump into spells, I just started by learning to communicate. Just… talking to things, you know?"

"Things meaning… like, inanimate objects?"

Tsubaki nodded. "It was easiest for me to start with living things. There's a camellia bush on the side of the house and talking to it was the first thing I did as a wizard."

Liz tilted her head. "Seems like a pretty small start for somebody who's supposed to be this magical superstar."

"It felt really natural," Tsubaki said with a shake of her head. "Communicating with the natural world really helps you get in tune with the heart of what wizardry's all about. That big rowan tree in the park where we met gave me a branch to make a wand. Maybe trying something similar will help you?"

She pursed her lips thoughtfully, chewing over the idea. "Well," she said after a few moments, "I guess _trying_ it can't hurt."

Tsubaki slid off the porch and stood, offering Liz a hand to pull her to her feet. "Let's go, then! I'll introduce you!" she said cheerily.

As she followed the other girl around to the side of the house, a thought occurred to her. "Tsubaki, how do you make a wand?"

"Oh, it's pretty simple, really. All you have to do is peel the bark off a piece of wood— rowans and ash work best— and leave it outside on a night when the moon is full…"

* * *

Tsubaki, Liz was certain, had far too much time on her hands. How she could possibly know so much already about the ins and outs of wizardry, _way_ more than Liz had learned, was beyond her. Either the girl had learned how to freeze time so she could study for a month, or she just did nothing but read the manual and hang out with Liz.

Either way, it was kind of a wizardly buzzkill.

Still, her advice about "getting in tune with nature" had actually been pretty good. Tsubaki's flower was a sweet little plant, as far as plants could have personality, and once Liz stopped trying so hard and just listened, it had actually been easy to go quiet and hear what it was saying.

Waving goodbye to Tsubaki over her shoulder, she entered her building with much more good cheer than she usually carried home with her.

So, naturally, there had to be bad vibes stinking up the place the second she unlocked the apartment door.

Roxy was flopped on the couch, still in her work apron, with her shoes littered on the floor beneath the glass coffee table. Her head rested on one armrest, and her feet were propped up on the other as she stared with glazed eyes at the TV screen.

"You left your book lyin' around," she droned, and to Liz's horror, her manual was sitting on the coffee table. But her moment of panic vanished as Roxy added, "Listen, do yourself a favor and don't read those trashy romance novels. The sex ain't realistic and getting ideas about how guys are gonna treat you right is only gonna let you down."

"Got dumped again, huh?" Liz asked, unable to suppress a smirk.

"Shut up." Roxy picked up the manual and, without even looking around, tossed it one-handed over her head.

Liz fumbled it, and had to drop the bag with her shoebox in it to keep from dropping the book on the floor.

At the heavy _thunk_ of the boots against the floor, Roxy twisted around on the couch, peering over the armrest. Her eyes narrowed. "What've you got?" she asked.

 _Shit._

"Just some shoes," Liz said.

"The hell'd you get the money from?" she asked.

"I do have a job, you know."

Roxy's glare deepened. "You ain't got enough money to be spending _shit_ on sixty dollar shoes. You're part of this household and we're all fuckin' broke so start acting like it. We've got bills to pay and if you want to stay here, you better start contributing."

 _Make that dumped_ and _fired_ , Liz thought to herself. Her so-called mother might be a royal bitch, but she only asked Liz for money when she was out of a job again.

"Not really giving me much incentive to pay up," she muttered. Getting the hell out of here sounded _fantastic_.

"What'd you say?" Roxy hissed.

"Nothing, just thinking out loud." Liz made the executive decision to just walk away from this one. It wasn't even worth it and she needed to wash off the "outside in the afternoon in Nevada" sweat. "I'm gonna go take a shower."

She dropped her bag in her room and grabbed a towel before heading into the bathroom. She stripped, tossing her clothes on the counter where they wouldn't get covered in dust balls, and stepped into the shower.

Before she even turned the water on, she realized she had made a horrible mistake. The shower curtain had become a science experiment, and she was pretty sure all this mold had _not_ been here the last time she showered. What the hell had happened?

She wrinkled her nose. The mold behind the toilet was disgusting enough, but the orange gunk creeping up in the sticky folds of the shower curtain was just one step too far. She was going to have to break out the bleach before she could even _think_ about taking—

Wait. Wasn't this the perfect opportunity to practice working with living things?

Talking to Tsubaki's flowers today had been so much easier than just trying to force her willpower onto random laws of physics. Her vocabulary in the Speech was still kind of limited, but she wasn't hopeless at it without the manual. Definitely she could at least talk the mold out of growing on the shower curtain.

Mold, as it turned out, was alarmingly stubborn. Talking a living thing— even something as primitive as mold, only sentient in the vaguest possible sense— out of living in the way it was made to do was _really_ difficult. The most she could do was de-lyme the shower head and convince the mold on the curtain to join its fellow colony under the toilet. If she could have sent both colonies to the condemned and empty building across the street, she could have gotten rid of the whole lot, but since she wasn't totally confident in her ability to transport them there, neither were they, so she was forced to accept a temporary compromise, and extracted a promise to _stay put_ until she could work out a more permanent solution.

Oh well. At least she could shower without fear of slime. The crust-free showerhead was a nice change, too.

 _Guess I'm not a_ complete _failure as a wizard_ , she thought, smiling slightly. _I can actually do this._

* * *

Perhaps if Mai hadn't called in sick for her closing shift, if Liz hadn't volunteered to stay an extra two hours to fill the gap, it wouldn't have happened. _Perhaps_. But that extra $17 on her paycheck was too appealing to pass up, so she stuck around, much to Joe's approval. She could've done without the damn college kids who refused to leave for twenty minutes after closing, but it was still more money in her pocket.

Even as late as it was, the pavement was still warm through her shoes as she shuffled home. Her legs ached, her blood pressure had probably gone through the roof after forcing on that cheery customer service smile, and both her hair and her work uniform smelled strongly of a nauseating combination of coffee and the disinfectant they used to mop the floor. All she wanted in the world was a shower and about ten hours of sleep.

But when she got home, she could tell by the time she had shut the front door that sleep wasn't in the cards for her for awhile yet.

She saw Patti first. She was sitting by the door to the kitchen with a pack of markers, coloring something on loose leaf paper, but kept darting nervous glances to the other side of the living room, where their mother was waiting.

Roxy was, for once, not glazed-out in front of the TV. She was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, fingers twitching against the bare skin of her elbows. She had a feverish look in her eyes, pupils blown wide, and the whites were bloodshot as if she'd been smoking, but the apartment didn't smell like it.

It was sad, Liz thought, that she was too jaded to think maybe Roxy had just been smoking outside for once.

"Where the fuck have you been?" she demanded.

"Work," Liz muttered. "Unlike some people, I still have a job."

Roxy made a noise somewhere between a growl and a hiss. "You filthy little liar, I know you were out with some guy. He's been dropping you off here all the time!"

It wasn't even worth correcting her at this point. "Whatever, I need a sh—"

"Don't you walk away from me, brat! I got somethin' you need to see," Roxy hissed, pushing away from the wall she had been leaning against and stomping over to the coffee table. She snatched a piece of paper from the table and shoved it in Liz's direction. "Do you know what this fucking is?" she demanded.

"Maybe if you'd stop waving it around all over the place I could fucking see it," Liz sneered. Roxy was twitchy and a little too full of frantic energy, and it was making her nervous— this wasn't the first time and it wouldn't be the last, but it was always like walking a highwire to manage her like this.

"Liz, don't fight," Patti murmured, and Liz didn't have to look at her to see the pleading look in her sister's eyes.

Roxy managed to hold the paper still long enough for Liz to see the words _**Eviction Notice**_ in bold print at the top of the page. Her stomach dropped.

"Didn't I fucking tell you to pay the goddamn rent a week ago?" Roxy spat. "You have no fucking respect—"

Liz laughed, and it tasted bitter in her mouth. "You're seriously blaming _me_ for this? You're supposed to be the adult here, pay your own damn rent!"

"Guys, please," Patti begged, getting to her feet. "Please don't."

"I work hard to put a fucking roof over your head and feed you," Roxy snapped, advancing towards Liz. "The very goddamn least you can do is walk to the office and give them the check!"

"If it's so easy, why don't you do it?" Liz demanded. Her blood was heating up with every word out of Roxy's mouth, and she knew losing her temper right now was a seriously bad idea, but she just couldn't seem to help it. "You're not helpless!"

Roxy pointed a finger at her threateningly. "When I come home from work, I'm _tired_ ," she snarled, jabbing Liz in the chest, her sharp false nails scraping Liz's skin even through the thin fabric of her work shirt. "I'm not asking that goddamn much—"

"And you think I'm not tired after work?" Liz interrupted, her voice rising. "You can't even keep a job for a whole year, and I work my ass off to make sure that we're never short on grocery mon—"

"Mom, Liz, _please_ —"

"Oh please, you're not tired because you've been working, you little slut," Roxy snapped. "You're tired from fucking whatever guy you keep—"

" _I keep telling you, there's no guy!_ " Liz shouted. " _I'm_ a slut? Please, you're the one banging randos every other weekend with your ten year old in the other room, you fucking whore!"

Roxy's face went dead white, and a kind of fury Liz had never seen before burst across her face. Before Liz even had time to process what had happened, Roxy's fist slammed into her gut with enough force to knock her breathless and send her stumbling back.

"Don't you ever, _ever_ call me that!" Roxy screamed, raising her hand to strike her again. "I'll kill you, you fucking bitch!" Liz flinched for the blow, trying to simultaneously remember the words to a shielding spell and put herself out of the way, but she was backed up against the couch and there was no time to—

The sound of skin striking skin rang through the apartment, but Liz wasn't the one who took the blow. Patti had thrown herself between them, hands raised to push Roxy back, but she was too small.

Liz watched in horror as Patti fell, shoved to the side with how hard she had been hit, and crashed through the glass table, shattering it as she fell, and slamming her head into the metal crossbar.


	4. Chapter 4

Liz knew there was air in the room, but her lungs couldn't seem to find it. All she could do was stare.

She had been slapped and yanked around by her mother for most of her life, but never in Liz's memory had Roxy ever raised a hand to her younger daughter. Even if she'd felt the inclination, Liz never would have let her. But now, one stupid slip-up and...

Razor-sharp chunks of thick glass lay scattered across the dirty carpet, glittering like ice in the dim light. Patti lay at the center of the mess, her clothing frosted with flakes of broken glass, head resting against the crossbar of the table. For a terrifyingly long moment, she didn't move.

"Patricia?" Roxy's voice was fragile and very quiet. She looked like a lost child suddenly, tremulous and terrified. She stepped cautiously toward her youngest daughter.

Her movement was like an electric shock to Liz's nervous system. She jumped in front of Roxy, hands raised threateningly.

"Don't you dare," she hissed. "Don't you _dare_."

"Lizzy—"

" _Don't call me that!_ "

Roxy looked stricken, but Liz didn't care. She turned and knelt swiftly next to Patti. Despite the care she took to avoid the cut glass, she could feel a few shards biting her knees through the fabric of her jeans.

"Hey." She touched Patti's face tenderly, fingers brushing aside a lock of her hair to reveal a deep cut on her forehead. "Can you hear me, Patti?"

Patti shifted, and made a whining noise in her throat. Liz felt a rush of profound relief that her sister was still breathing, but it was replaced almost immediately by terror, because she wasn't opening her eyes. She shook Patti's shoulder gently and called her name again, eliciting another moan of pain and a twitching hand, but not much else.

"Patti! Come on, wake up baby," she pleaded.

But Patti lay still.

Shit.

Liz's skin felt too tight, as if she was about to burst out of her body, and her heart was going way too fast. She couldn't think. She couldn't… she couldn't—

Gently, so gently, Liz lifted Patti up from the bed of glass she lay in, looping one of Patti's arms over her own shoulder as she wrapped her own left arm around her sister's waist. She got to her feet and pulled her sister vertical along with her.

Liz turned around. "You," she growled, surprised to hear how furious her voice sounded, because she couldn't even feel it. "You stay right. fucking. _there_."

Roxanne stumbled back and dropped onto the ratty armchair behind her, eyes still huge and too blue. Dimly, Liz registered that the violence of the moment, the fact that it was Patti and not Liz who was bleeding this time, seemed to have shocked her into stillness. She opened her mouth as if to speak as Liz was backing away towards the door, but there must have been something in Liz's eyes that stopped her, because she subsided back into silence before she could even start.

The door shutting behind them was an oddly final sound.

"Stay shut, will you?" Liz said absently to the lock, slipping into the Speech as her fingers brushed the metal doorknob.

She made it as far as the curb in front of their house in a daze, and then found herself standing lost with no idea what to do or where to go next.

Patti's head was lolling back against her shoulder, and it might have been the bad light from the greenish halogen streetlamp, but her color didn't look good. Liz wasn't exactly a first aid expert, but she was pretty sure the fact that Patti had been unconscious for more than a minute was bad. She'd seen a couple of people get knocked in the head in P.E. during her school days, and being unconscious at all was usually cause for fuss. But Patti still wasn't responding...

Where the hell was she supposed to get help for her, though? She didn't have a phone, couldn't call for an ambulance, and even if she did, there was no way she could afford it, but the emergency clinic at the shelter down on Plum was way too far to walk. By some miracle she was still holding her purse, so at least she had some cash, but—

Rose wasn't exactly the busiest street in Death City, but it wasn't a dead zone either; it wasn't shocking that a cab turned the corner from Ashburn not long after they stumbled out to the curb. Desperately, she flagged it down, and had yanked the door almost before the beat-up maroon sedan had come to a stop.

"Where to?" the driver asked.

 _Marie._

"Four twenty-five Gallows Avenue," she blurted out.

The words were out of her mouth before she even had the chance to think about it, but once she did, it suddenly made sense. The driver looked skeptically at her. "That's a residential street, lady. You sure you don't wanna go to a hospital?"

Liz shook her head. "Shut the fuck up and drive, will you?" she demanded.

The cabbie tilted his head with a resigned expression and floored it.

While the drive seemed to last forever, it was probably only nine or ten minutes; cab drivers in Death City drove like maniacs under regular circumstances, and she was certain the threat of bloodstains in the back seat was plenty of incentive to take even greater liberties with the speed limit. But no matter how fast he drove, it could never be fast enough to satisfy Liz, not while blood was still oozing from the cut on Patti's temple.

When the cab finally pulled up to the curb in front of the Steins' house, Liz threw a handful of fives and tens at the driver. "Keep the change," she snapped, something she'd never thought she'd say and never would have if she weren't in too much of a hurry to wait for him to count out dollars and cents.

Once she'd extricated herself from the cramped back seat, she pulled Patti's arm over her shoulder again and struggled up the walk. The rubber toes of Patti's shoes made a jittering sound as they dragged across the cement.

Liz was relieved, as they climbed the steps, to see a light on in a ground-floor window. Reaching out with her free hand, she rang the bell three or four times and then proceeded to pound on the door with a closed fist.

"Come on come on come on come on _come on!_ " she hissed rapidly through gritted teeth, shifting anxiously from foot to foot.

Through the panes of glass at the top of the door she saw the hall light flicker on, and heard a muffled " _What on earth…?_ " as Marie opened the door.

It only took the older woman a moment to recognize the situation. "Oh god, Liz! Is this your sister?" she asked.

Liz nodded mutely.

Marie wasted no time, rushing through the door to scoop Patti up in her arms. Despite being so tiny, barely bigger than Patti herself, she had no difficulty lifting the girl up bridal style and carrying her quickly down the hall.

"Frank!" she yelled. "Frank, get out here, quick!"

Liz followed her to the living room and watched as she laid Patti on the sofa, sliding one of the throw pillows beneath her head with easy hands. Marie knelt down, parting Patti's hair with gentle fingers to inspect the head injury. Liz hovered nervously behind her, battling the urge to push her aside in order to be closer. Patti needed Marie much more than she needed her sister at the moment.

Once Patti was settled, Marie looked around with a worried frown. " _Oh_ where is he- _FRANK!_ "

"I'm right here, no need to shout," he said lightly as he stepped into the room, but his expression turned serious as he spied the unconscious girl on the couch.

"Frank, this is Liz's sister," Marie said, rising gracefully to her feet as she gestured to Patti. "Look her over, will you? I need to know what I'm dealing with before I get to work."

Frank nodded and strode over to one of the end tables. He slid open a drawer and pulled out a pen light and, of all things, a stethoscope, leading Liz to wonder whether he just kept those things stashed around the house. She didn't know him very well, but it seemed like something he would do.

As he approached the sofa, Marie took Liz's hand lightly and pulled her a few paces away. "Give him some room to work," she murmured.

Frank pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, also produced from a box in the end table, and bent over Patti. He checked her pulse and her breathing, then dabbed at her nostrils. He raised his gloved fingers closer to the lamp, and Liz saw that there was some kind of clear fluid on the latex. He frowned, and her stomach dropped.

"What happened to her?" he asked.

"She… I… my mother," Liz mumbled, and let out a shaky breath in an attempt to steady herself. Beside her, she heard Marie gasp. "She was pissed at me, and Patti tried to get between us, and-" She shrugged helplessly.

"I see. She hit her head, I assume?"

Liz nodded.

"How long has she been unconscious?"

"Um… maybe twenty, twenty-five minutes?" Liz guessed. "She was kind of mumbling a little in the cab but then she was out again."

Frank's eyes narrowed as he looked back at Patti. He thumbed open her eyelids to check them with his little light, expression unreadable as he continued to look her over.

It took him maybe two more minutes to complete his assessment, and Liz could hear her pulse in her ears the entire time. She felt lightheaded and halfway wondered if _she_ was going to pass out next.

Eventually, Frank straightened up, snapping off his gloves as he turned to face them. "Well," he said, "the good news is that her pulse is regular and there's no sign of a spinal injury."

"What's the bad news?" Liz asked.

"She has a concussion. A severe one. Marie?" He looked to his wife.

"Right!" she said, and moved to Patti's side with a businesslike air. She held out a hand and her humongous manual came zooming to her from another room; she caught it deftly and turned an armchair to face the sofa. She sank down into it and opened the manual smoothing her hand over Patti's forehead.

Liz watched her anxiously, and would have gone to sit next to her on the floor, but Frank laid a restraining hand on her shoulder. "My wife will need to concentrate," he said. "It's best to leave her to it."

Terrified and mute, Liz nodded and allowed him to steer her to the kitchen.

"Would you like something to drink?" he asked. "Tea? Coffee? Maybe cocoa? Bear in mind that I don't actually know how to make cocoa."

Seeing as it was about a thousand degrees outside even after nightfall, Liz didn't even bother to dignify that with a response. "No. Um. Will my sister be okay?"

Frank sat down at the table. "Take a seat," he said as he propped his leg up on an adjacent chair. Liz obeyed numbly. "Alright. In simple terms, your sister's brain has slammed into the inside of her skull- rather hard, I might add. Your mother must have one hell of a backhand."

Liz was pretty sure that if looks could kill, Frank Stein would be a sizzling pile of radioactive ash right about now. Part of her also really wanted to cry, but she wasn't quite ready to break down yet.

"That was in bad taste," he said after several long, uncomfortable moments of staring at each other. "I suppose I should have accepted by now that the world doesn't appreciate dark humor like it used to."

Liz nearly hissed at him in sheer frustration. " _Is Patti going to get better?_ "

"Yes, of course," he said. "I won't lie to you, her injury is very serious. Brain injuries are always tricky to manage, even with wizardry on your side. The brain is a complex organ, and the debate about where the flesh and blood ends and where the individual- the soul, if you will- begins is one that has been going on for millennia. Healing the physical seat of thought and memory is a difficult undertaking."

"But Marie can do it, right?" Liz asked anxiously.

Frank knocked his foot idly against the leg of the table. "Naturally. Marie is one of the best healers of the last century- among humans, anyway. It's likely to take her several hours, but her work is far more reliable than contemporary medical science."

Liz nodded, surprised to find that her heart pounded just as hard from relief as it had from fear.

"Speaking of which," he continued, "may I ask why you decided to bring your sister here instead of the hospital?"

She picked nervously at a snag in her ugly Starbucks polo. "Couldn't afford an ambulance. Or a doctor, for that matter," she said, honesty dripping out without her consent.

Frank leaned back in his seat, and his glasses flashed in the glaring kitchen lights, momentarily obscuring his eyes. "No health insurance, I'm guessing? Ah, well, that's the state of things in this country."

Liz just shrugged. Talking politics was outside both her current emotional capabilities and her range of interests… and it also seemed in pretty bad taste while her sister was unconscious in the other room.

"In the state of Nevada," Frank said after an excruciatingly long pause, "in most states, as a matter of fact, school teachers are mandated reporters."

"Huh?"

"Individuals whose careers bring them into contact with vulnerable demographics— children, the elderly, the chronically ill— are usually required by law to report suspected incidents of domestic or sexual abuse," he explained.

Liz took a minute to jump from his abstruse attempt at clarification to the point he was driving at. "Wait…" she said slowly. "Marie's a teacher. So are you saying that…?"

Frank nodded. "We'll need to place a call to Child Protective Services."

Ice water spilled down every nerve in her body as she processed what that would mean. Her mind flashed to Amanda Avery, a former classmate who'd been in seven different foster homes by the age of twelve, and to every other system horror story she'd ever heard— and she'd heard _plenty_.

"You can't _do_ that!" she exclaimed, jumping to her feet so fast she slammed her knee painfully hard into the underside of the table.

He shook his head. "I'm afraid there isn't much choice in the matter," he said. "It's the law, Liz."

"But you're _wizards!_ " she exclaimed. "Isn't wizardry all about… about breaking natural laws and stuff?"

Frank's expression was neutral, but there was some kind of sadness in his eyes as he said, "That's not how it works. We're not above the rules of our homeworlds, Liz, wizardry doesn't give us greater rights than any other person. We just have greater access to the intimate nature of the universe."

"Well what fucking good is that if you're just going to take my sister away from me anyway?!" she demanded. "That's why I took the stupid fucking Oath— so I could _protect her!_ "

"I know," he said solemnly. "But sometimes ordinary human measures can be just as—"

"I don't want to hear this," Liz interrupted, hands balled into fists at her sides. She turned and walked out of the kitchen, striding down the hall towards the front door.

He was following. She could tell even though his steps were so light the floorboards barely creaked, and she knew for sure when he said, in a surprisingly gentle voice, "Elizabeth, I really think this will be for the—"

"If you say 'for the best,' I am going to skin you alive, old man," she growled, and slammed open the front door. She pounded down the front walk, sensible work shoes making hardly a noise on the pavement.

"Liz!" Frank called after her, "Come back!"

Liz didn't even pause. "I'm going for a walk," she growled. "I'll be back in awhile."

That was more consideration than she had ever given Roxy.

Her long legs ate up the pavement and carried her mindlessly through the dark; she was too deep in the sickening mire of her thoughts to attend to where she was walking.

Patti was _hurt_. It was Liz's worst nightmare come true. Being kicked around and belittled by their mother was not new territory for her, but Patti was younger and smaller and not familiar with just how rough Roxy could really be. Liz had worked so hard almost from the moment Patti was born to shield her not just from their mother's unpredictable temper but from having to witness just how scummy the woman who'd given birth to them really was. She'd failed pretty spectacularly at the latter, but she had always done a decent job at keeping Patti _physically_ safe. But then in one stupid second…

Liz wasn't noble enough to blame herself. This was on Roxy, all of it, but she couldn't stop herself from running over the last few days, trying to find something she could have done differently, anything—

She broke into a run. Misplaced guilt and impotent anger choked her, and the glowing windows of the nice homes in this neighborhood mocked her. People who lived in houses like that didn't beat their family members, and she could hear their judgment in the slap of her shoes on the pavement.

Liz ran until she was winded, then pulled up, bracing herself against the pole of a stoplight to catch her breath. She must have run at least three-quarters of a mile, she wasn't certain, and looked up at the street sign to find out where she was; she was only slightly taken aback to realize that she was at an intersection with the avenue Tsubaki lived on.

 _Tsubaki._

The thought of the other girl gave her some clarity. Somehow in all the horror and the chaos, Liz had forgotten about wizardry. Or, more precisely, she had forgotten that _she_ could use wizardry. Having Marie save Patti's life was all well and good, but Liz hadn't been able to sit back and let an adult solve her problems for a long time. She'd be damned if she sat back and let Patti be taken away from her, and wizardry was the best tool in her arsenal right now.

Unfortunately, though, her manual was back at the apartment, forgotten in the heat of the moment; no matter how good she was getting with the Speech, she wasn't going to achieve much without some help.

Well, that settled it. She was going to visit Tsubaki.

She jogged down the street until she reached the tidy little house where her friend lived, and paused on the sidewalk in front of it. She hadn't actually met Tsubaki's parents, and anyway, knocking on the door after eleven seemed like the fastest way to get sent packing.

Instead, she crept around the side of the house, peering up at the window she was pretty sure belonged to Tsubaki's bedroom. The light was still on, so she figured getting her attention wouldn't be too hard. She plucked a rock from the ground and lobbed it at Tsubaki's window, making a surprisingly loud clanking noise as it struck glass. She tossed another rock, and was bending down to find a third when the filmy white curtains were pushed aside and the glass pane was raised.

The sight of Tsubaki, lit from behind by the light from her bedroom window, was an unexpected comfort. She looked angelic in silhouette, with her hair gleaming in the warm light.

"Liz!" she called down. "What are you doing here?"

"Tsubaki… I…" Words failed her again.

Tsubaki seemed to realize something was wrong. She murmured a few words in the Speech, popped open the screen, and walked down from the second floor on a staircase formed of solid nitrogen pulled from the air. She stepped lightly onto the grass. "What's wrong?" she asked gently.

"It's my sister," Liz said helplessly. "We got home tonight and Roxy was… our mother, she… she was so mad because I forgot to— whatever. She was so pissed and Patti got in the way, and—" Her throat closed up and she choked off the end of her sentence. The adrenaline had faded and left her defenseless against the reality of the situation as it crashed down on her. She shook her head helplessly.

"Oh no," Tsubaki gasped, covering her mouth with a graceful hand. "Will she be okay?"

Liz shrugged. "I guess. Marie…"

It didn't seem to matter that she couldn't find the words to explain further. Tsubaki reached out to her and engulfed her in a warm hug. It was more comfort and affection than Liz could remember receiving from anyone, Patti excepted, and something broke inside her. She clung to Tsubaki, throwing her arms around her as she burst into tears. She couldn't even bring herself to be embarrassed about it. There was no room for anything but fear and grief and bone-deep exhaustion.

Tsubaki, to her unending gratitude, didn't speak. She didn't shush her or make bullshit promises that everything would be okay. She just rocked her gently, stroking her hair in empathetic silence.

Liz wished she could say she wasn't a crier. She wished she could claim to bear through the bitter injustices of her life with iron grace and a stoic face, but it wasn't true. In the heat of the moment, she did what she had to do and always had, but afterwards…

Well, the fact that she was sobbing on Tsubaki's shoulder spoke for itself, didn't it?

But her friend's gentle affection steadied her as easily as it had cracked her open, and it wasn't long before she was pushing Tsubaki away, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her jacket and thanking every Power she could imagine for the miracle of waterproof mascara.

"Thanks," she mumbled abashedly.

Tsubaki nodded, and her eyes were warm even though her expression was somber. "Did you say Marie was taking care of Patti?" she asked.

"Yeah. Figured wizardry would be a better bet than a hospital," she said. "Cheaper, too."

"That's smart. Marie can fix practically everything," Tsubaki affirmed. "Is she still working on her?"

Liz shrugged. "Probably. I needed to get some air, so…"

Tsubaki reached out and touched her arm lightly, a soft show of support. "I can drive you back there in a little bit, if you want."

Liz twisted her mouth into a sort-of smile that was probably more like a grimace and tilted her head in acknowledgement and silent thanks.

"What did your mo— I mean, what's wrong with your sister?"

Liz almost smiled at Tsubaki's floundering attempt to politely skirt around the domestic abuse elephant. _Almost_. "Concussion. Frank said she'll be okay, but…"

"Head injuries are scary, even with wizardry hedging your bets," Tsubaki concluded for her.

"Yeah, but that's not the worst of it. Apparently since Marie's a teacher she's a 'mandated reporter' or whatever," Liz said, with liberal use of airquotes. "So I guess she's gonna call CPS on us."

"You mean Child Protective Services, right?" Tsubaki asked, brow furrowing in confusion. "But wouldn't that be a good thing? If your mother is like this—"

"Don't pretend you know jack shit about our situation," Liz snapped. She only felt a little bit bad at the sight of Tsubaki's stricken expression.

"You're right, I'm sorry," Tsubaki said. "Can you explain things to me? Maybe I can help."

That was what Liz had been counting on. "If the police comes knocking, there's no way Roxanne'll be able to get her shit together; Patti and I will get shoved into the foster system, and we won't be kept together. I've known kids who were separated from their siblings before. It's not—" She cut off as a wave of horror at the anticipated loss broke over her. She floundered, cast adrift, and all she could find to say was, "I can't lose Patti."

Tsubaki smiled, bittersweet. "That much I can understand. I can't imagine losing Masamune."

"Yeah."

Silence fell for a moment, both of them sinking down into silent reflection. Eventually, Tsubaki broke the momentary calm. "Come inside. Standing out here is no good." She began climbing back up to her window, waving for Liz to follow her.

Liz hopped up the barely-visible staircase behind Tsubaki and into her bedroom. She was relieved to realize that she had presence of mind enough to remember to take off her shoes; the shock was starting to wear off. She plopped down on the desk chair while Tsubaki settled down cross-legged on her futon.

"What do you want to do?" she asked.

Liz shrugged. "Not sure. Make Roxy less of a bitch so CPS won't take us away?"

Tsubaki shook her head. "Bad idea. Psychotropic spells are very dangerous. They don't last, and the backlash on the wizard can be really bad."

Liz frowned. She hadn't actually read that chapter of the manual. Every time she looked for it, she found herself getting distracted by other things. "Guess that means erasing Marie and Frank's memories is off the table too, then?"

Tsubaki made an apologetic face.

"Well _shit_ , what am I supposed to do, wave a fucking magic wand like yours and make it like it never happened?" she snapped, flinging herself back in the chair in disgust.

"If you went back in time, maybe," Tsubaki said wryly.

It was probably meant as a joke, but it sparked a memory from her very first day as a wizard, when Frank had talked about time travel. "Wait a minute. What if I _did_ go back in time?" she asked, sitting up sharply.

"What?!"

"I could stop it from ever happening at all!" Liz said excitedly, hope swelling within her. "And that would be better for Patti, too, right? I mean, Marie can fix her _physically_ , but—" _But nothing can take away the fact that her mother almost killed her._ "And it's possible, right? We can set up something like that, can't we?"

The other girl fiddled nervously with the edge of her blanket. "I'm not… I mean, it's _possible_ , but are you sure it's a good idea?"

"Why wouldn't it be a good idea?" Liz demanded. "It's the _best_ idea!"

Tsubaki looked pensive. "Well, for one thing, I do not think you can talk to your past self, and you would need to do that to make it work. You can't just go and… and get your mother out of the house or something, either, because if you did, nothing would happen, so you'd have no motivation to go back, and if you don't go back, then Patti gets hurt and… well, you get what I mean, right?"

Trying to work through it made Liz a little dizzy, so she could kind of see the problem. But like hell was she going to give up just like that. "Okay, but what if I just went back to this afternoon and told you what happened?" she suggested, staring intently at a spot on the rug as she formed her plan. "Then past-you could go get past-me and tell me about it, right? I wouldn't have to talk to myself, you could just bring Patti and me back here and, um… tell me to go back in time to tell you about it? Would that work?"

"I guess it makes sense," Tsubaki said slowly, but she still looked reluctant. "I don't know, though. This makes me nervous. Timeslides are usually managed really closely by seniors or advisories, and there's no way we'll get Mr. or Mrs. Stein to sign off on this."

"Do I look like I give a shit?" Liz demanded, leaning forward to look Tsubaki right in the eye. "This is my baby sister's entire future at stake!"

Tsubaki held her gaze for a long moment, indigo meeting cornflower as she evaluated Liz's defiant look. After a few slow heartbeats, her posture slumped and she dropped her eyes. "Alright, I'll help," she said softly.

Liz nodded, feeling oddly triumphant. "Okay. What do we do?"

* * *

Twenty minutes, five sugar cubes, a silver teaspoon, and a pair of D-cells later, they were sitting on Tsubaki's floor, cross-legged, as Tsubaki copied the words of the spell out of her manual onto a piece of notebook paper.

"I still don't think this is a very good idea," she said, but handed the paper over to Liz anyway. "There's a lot that could go wrong."

Liz was so far beyond caring. She snatched the paper from Tsubaki's hands and skimmed over it eagerly.

"Does your name look right?" Tsubaki asked. "I just used the shorthand from your first spell, but with how much has happened today, your name might've cha—"

"No, don't worry, it's fine," Liz said with a cursory glance at her name. "Let's do this."

"But have you checked—"

"It doesn't matter," Liz said. "I'm sure you got it right. You're the prodigy and super talented at this shit, right?"

"But—"

She huffed loudly, drowning out Tsubaki's objections. "Look, let's just get this done," she growled.

Reluctantly, Tsubaki got to her feet, extending a hand down to help Liz up as well. They stood side by side in the middle of the room, and Liz found herself thinking, nonsensically, it was a shame that Tsubaki couldn't come back with her. She could have used the company. But that wasn't going to work. Tsubaki was doing enough— almost more than Liz was comfortable with— just helping her with this. She didn't want to be any more in debt to the other girl.

One second of eye contact, a tiny nod from Tsubaki, and together they spoke the opening phrase of the spell.

They had never worked a wizardry together. They had coached each other through practice sessions (well, more like Tsubaki coaching her, with Liz occasionally correcting her grammar), but this was the first time they had ever joined their voices together in a spell, and Liz found the experience _intoxicating_.

That overpowering sense that the universe was leaning in close to listen to them, the tension snapping in the air, was magnified a hundredfold, but with Tsubaki's voice joining in the song, with their words melding together in a perfect harmony, matching rhythms… the silence that cocooned them didn't feel oppressive as it had to her before. It felt joyous, like champagne in her bloodstream, and it stripped away all her fears and world-weary anger for a fleeting eternity. She wanted, irrationally, to stay in this moment, matching words with Tsubaki, forever.

Before she could even completely process the feeling, the spell was reaching the crescendo, specifying the time coordinates she was aiming for, and something else caught her attention, something that wasn't quite right in the phrasing, but—

And then the spell took hold, snatching up her fragile body and ripping it free of time. Everything went dark and light at the same time as space distorted and she was flung violently away from reality.

The last thing Liz saw before she was torn away was Tsubaki's face, blue-violet eyes surprised and fearful as the world winked out.

* * *

 **Author's Note-** Chapter 4 is the last section that is completely finished. Chapters 5-7 (plus epilogue) are partially complete, but piecemeal, so, as previously noted, they will be available as soon as I can possibly get them wrapped up. Stay tuned for the rest of DITWW!


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